Three Oscar Nominees Rely on Thomson Post Products

The Aviator with 11 nominations including best picture, Collateral (two nominations) and Vera Drake (three nominations) are leading contenders to sweep the boards at the 77th Annual Academy Awards. In all three, Thomson digital technology provided the creative platform from which these very successful movies sprang.

The Aviator was scanned on a Spirit 4K High Resolution Film Scanner and DataCine and finished as a digital intermediate on the Grass Valley Specter Virtual DataCine from Thomson at Technicolor in Burbank. Director Martin Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson wanted to create a historic quality for the images, to recreate the characteristic, highly saturated, ?Technicolor look. By going down the digital intermediate route it was easy to develop the required look consistently.

Vera Drake also uses a historic look and feel, this time for London in the 1950s. Director Mike Leigh and cinematographer Dick Pope shot on Super 16mm film, then scanned it on a Thomsons Grass Valley Spirit DataCine and conformed and colour corrected on the Specter at VTR in London, before writing the finished movie out to 35mm film.

And Michael Manns Collateral, (DreamWorks), relied on the Viper FilmStream digital cinematography camera for more than 80 percent of its content.

Thomson congratulates the creators and producers of all three movies for their nominations.